For Christine...

I just flew to Las Vegas and back to visit my mother.  If you don’t know, my mother has dementia and has entered the last stages of the disease. 

She doesn’t communicate—she has lost the ability to comprehend language.  If she says anything, it’s usually parroting numbers or letters over and over again (eighty-nine, eighty-nine, eighty-nine...or A, E, A, E, A...).   Needless to say, you can’t have a conversation with her.  You can’t tell her what wonderful or dreadful things you’ve experienced since you last saw her.  You can’t hear about what has gone right or wrong in her life--from her perspective.   You can’t have a relationship with her in the normal sense of the word, the way you have since you were born.   You don’t even really know if she recognizes you by sight.  Although if she doesn’t know the meanings of words anymore, it’s kind of doubtful that she recognizes that she once had a baby, and now this woman in front of her once was that baby.   But the mind is a strange place, and even more so when it is dying, so you never know what she knows.  She is still bright-eyed and makes eye contact, and sometimes smiles, and sometimes furrows her brow, whether in concentration or frustration, who knows?   At least she is not yet catatonic and staring off into space.  That day, I know, is coming. 

I read Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain a few years ago—a random buy from a used bookstore.   In the simplest of terms, it told of the way the brain somehow enjoys/interprets music when other parts of it can’t even speak or think or move in ways that we think are normal.  People with autism or brain damage from accidents or dementia can inexplicably remember song lyrics and sing them, or learn complex pieces of music after hearing them once and play them on an instrument.  And they can’t even tell you their names or brush their teeth.   It’s a different part of the brain that rules over music than speech or motor coordination—in fact, the musical part of the brain varies from person-to-person, depending on if they are a musician or just an avid listener.   Reading this began to cause my own brain to light up like a Christmas tree.  Mom had always loved music and singing and dancing.  What if we could reach my mom through music? 

During her illness, which has been slow and gradual, my mom latched onto a certain CD that she liked—Barry Manilow’s The Greatest Songs of the Fifties.   She would insist that it be played over and over and over again as we rode in the car to wherever we were going.   Later on, she would insist on going for a ride just to listen to the CD.  My dad offered to play it in the house, but no.  She wanted the whole experience of looking out the window while it was playing.  And she sang her little heart out.  She knew all of the words, you see, because they were covers of the songs she grew up with.   That CD grabbed a corner of something that was still familiar to her.  She had forgotten people and facts, but she remembered those lyrics.  When I still worked for Carole King, we had to sing backup on the live version of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, and the song stayed in my head.  When I began singing it on a subsequent visit to Vegas, my mom started singing it with me.  We sang together, unabashedly.  It was one of the greatest memories she could give me, and so unknowingly.  Again, I marveled that she still knew all of the words. 

After she went into the group home where she now lives, some time after that, my dad brought a portable CD player and headphones to her so she could listen to her Barry Manilow CD.  She would sing, and all we could hear was her voice, since she had the headphones on.  I’m sure she wondered why we were all grinning at her. 

Last year, I brought Martin to visit my family.  He had been learning to play ukulele, for about 9 months at the point of the trip.  He brought his uke, since he plays every single day and it has become part of him.  And he brought it when we went to visit my mom, and he played softly in the background as we stayed with her.  He’s very perceptive and he noticed how her eyes would light up when he played, and pointed it out.  She seemed to like it.  I don’t recall if we sang any of the songs we’d been learning.  But she was interested in hearing it.   By this time, all she was saying was the numbers and letters and I think her “eighty-nines” got really animated when she heard the music.   I again remembered the Oliver Sacks book and the correlation between music and the brain.   And I was so happy that he was able to make her happy, in his own way, doing something he loved and did every day.  She may not have remembered who he was, but she was feeling the effects of his playing, and that was joyous!

These last few months, when my sister visited, she reported that she was alternately singing and humming with the Barry Manilow CD when they played it for her.  She’d put her cellphone on speaker so I could hear her.  And it made me alternately happy to hear her saying SOMETHING and cry like a fucking baby that the only thing that could make her do that was singing a song.   And then, she was just humming.  And then, just sometimes.   Even the music was leaving her. 

I have a ukulele as well, but I don’t play it every day.  Every once in a while, more like.  But this trip, I decided I was going to bring my uke and play for her (Martin couldn’t get the time off work, so he wouldn’t be there to play for her).   I got the chords for “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and learned it.  It was halting, but I learned it.  I thought, maybe she’ll sing.  Maybe, just maybe, it’ll defy everything we know and touch a stray cell and fire a synapse and make her remember...My cousin Brian also had made a CD from songs from the actual record collection she had when she was young, as a child/early teenager.  The same fifties era as the Barry Manilow CD.  I brought that with me as well, tucked into my Sweet Little Songbook. 

This time, she was much quieter than in previous visits.  Before, it was a near constant stream of “eighty-nines”; this time, barely any.  Just her watching TV...and us.  She was alert and made eye contact.   Randomly, she’d “eighty-nine” under her breath.   When the nurses had left, I pulled out my uke and my songbook.  Turned to the right page.  I began playing.  The transitions were not very smooth between certain chords, but I kept going.  Looked at the chords and back at her, at the chords, and at her. 

Her eyes never left me.  But she did not sing.  But suddenly, it was perfectly fine.  I was no longer doing it for me, hoping for a certain reaction.   I was doing it for HER now, to make HER happy, giving her one of her favorite songs.  And in that, I WAS happy.  I was floating!  I didn’t cry like I’d thought I was going to; I made it through the song.   And her expression was just kind of neutral.  But I think she liked it.   I’m going to believe that she did like it. 

I played some other songs for her, too.  My sister and I sang The Go-Gos’ “Our Lips Are Sealed”, which I’d learned a few weeks ago.   Mom kind of reached out with her hand, and I put the ukulele in her lap.  She started picking the strings!   We were absolutely delighted!   Then her fingers got fascinated with the frets.  But she was making sound, herself.   Totally unexpected magic moment!   And then when she was listening to Brian’s CD, Dad got up and gave her a kiss, and she began “eighty-nine”-ing and “A, E”-ing and reached out for his hand, which he gave her.  Then he danced in front of her, holding her hand.  She looked up at him questioningly.  Then she kind of would look like she was trying to get up, moving her torso forward.  When he stopped, her brow furrowed.  Maybe she hadn’t wanted him to stop.  Maybe her body had the impulse to dance even though she couldn’t remember how. 

Soon after, she began to yawn, and eventually we left her to her upcoming dinner.  I flew back home the next morning. 

But I have pictures and video and memories of a magical afternoon when music transformed time into something unusual and unexpected, delighting us all. 

Including my mom.  Indubitably.